I really can’t believe the article I read in ‘The Guardian’ of Friday 23rd July 2010.

Enid Blyton‘s publisher Hodder, is to revise her text, starting with ten of the ‘Famous Five’ books, contemporizing them to reflect 21st Century language, whilst ostensibly leaving the plot and stories unchanged. The first ‘new look’ offering, will be: ‘Five On Treasure Island’, due for release in August 2010.

These books have been read and enjoyed, by all generations, for decades and to me, the publisher is basically insulting childrens’ intelligence, in an attempt to increase sales of what is already, a very lucrative seller.

Children can appreciate that these books were written in a different time and are now definitely up there with some of the other children’s classics, or are we going to re-write them all ….. ‘The Wind In The Willows’, The Railway Children’, ‘The Water Babies’… need I go on, or is the complete inanity of it obvious to everyone.

There have been some scathing comments left on a wide range of message boards, with almost total consensus against the changes; so perhaps we should all, en masse, buy any copies of these timeless adventure stories now and thwart the publisher in their venture?

First Lines

My name is Margaret Sybil Broadley Benson, nee Spencer, but you can call me Mags. I should tell you I’ve been married three times, not twice, but the last guy, Jimmy Hooper, hardly counted. We were only married for five months before he died. I didn’t even bother to change my name, not that I […]